Be Excellent To Each Other

To be fair, this does sound pretty cool.

I love my Octavia, for much the same reasons. Just a smaller Superb, or a Superb is a bigger Octavia (not sure which)

I am gutted to be handing min back and was tempted to buy it at £22k, but the finance does not make sense when I can get a salary sacrifice car through work..

Have you found the secret ice scraper yet?

Got myself a Kia Niro EV.

Oooh cool. Can you charge at home now??

Yeah, I had an EV charger fitted last week (with the landlord's permission)

Ohhhhh, no. I'll have to have a look for this and see if I can find it. I'm going to try and do it without looking it up.

Given it's a used car, it's possible that it was lost/taken by a previous owner (although, as the brollies were still there I'd expect the scraper to be somewhere too), or it might not find it due to poor searching skills. I shall report back!

Try the petrol cap.

That is good news.

That's a pretty big hint Kov

I haven't had to fill it up yet (in fact, I've barely driven it).

How about the removable light in the boot you can use as a torch? The Velcro braces in the boot you can stop stuff sliding about with. The false boot floor you can pull toward you slightly and drop the boot floor an extra 3-4”

The new Kia has that!

Not the literal petrol cap.

No, in a slot on the petrol cap cover. That's where mine was on the Kamiq, but it's now in the glove department. Brolly is still in the driver's door as well.

Yeah, I was entertained by the potential misunderstanding. I used ours just the other day to clear the snow ready for frost!

Intercooler, boost pipe, diverter valve upgrades and adjustable adjustable anti roll bar drop links fitted this week! The droplinks have made a gigantic difference - it sits better, feels firmer/pointier/less understeery and they fixed the knocking from the back since the shocks/springs/struts mounts were done.

The intercooler as expected adds a bit of lag off-boost but the DV upgrade helps keep it on boost when in motion. Clever stuff.

Not getting anywhere with progressive parts sorting the ECU maps I should have access to for the turbo so I think I'll just jump straight to adding a high flow cat and having a custom map done. Garage guy's methanol solenoid failed causing a hydrolock on his heavily modified Cupra so he's going even further and so might sell me his race cat, or at least confirm fitment (since no-one bothers listing the superb for these things, just golf, Octavia, Leon)

There's really no point, it still looks basically stock outside and under the bonnet! Plus loads of them are under other stuff.

Oh, I did put the gearbox tune on, that's made a big difference. Faster/harder shifts, no auto up/down in manual, better shift points, more likely to change when I tell it to. Can't take a photo of that either!

I've done a lot that leaves it basically unchanged, overall To the untrained eye (ie Helen) it's just slightly less comfy and slightly noisier. But come map/turbo day...

Fair enough then.

My trusty little Auris hadn’t missed a beat in this cold snap. I did have to dig around behind the stereo to free up my heater adjustment cables though, no idea how they snagged but all good now.

The garage gave me 2004 Focus as a courtesy car. Going back to fwd manual on a shitbox in this weather was terrifying. Glad to have the superb back! It's always a great recalibrator.

Not suggesting your auris is a shitbox obviously, you having to fiddle with the heater brought it back to me though.

Always amuses me seeing £££ RWDd struggling in this weather.

Ha, no offence taken. It was bought out of necessity when my beloved Leon died. It’s now grown on me though tbh. The cabling was probably due to me replacing the head unit a while back now I think about it.

The Polestar felt really surefooted in the snow the other day, 4WD and lots of weight low down seemed to work well. However the weight seems less helpful on this ice over the last couple of days but then I don't think anything much would help there apart from actual spikes or something.

You need the ice mode, mate.

Exciting Skoda updates:

The ice scraper is gone!
The boot floor in mine does not seem to be height adjustable, but it does have a nice plastic mat to keep the boot clean. The cargo nets are more useful than the velcro divider.
The torch is a neat touch (pretty dim though, I wouldn't bother using it if I had my phone to hand).
The umbrellas are cool but also a pain to fold back into the rectangular shape that the door-slot requires.

Overall I'm delighted with the car and feel it was a good pick.

Car has passed it's first MOT, Apparently parking sensors are not needed for it to pass

New car is due in march.. Very excited.

I am under a dilemma, do I get the sensor fixed before I return and risk an invoice , or try and get it fixed before (not paying Skoda £500).

My new car is due on Thursday. Exciting times.

I am going to miss the Octavia, will be sad to see it go.

Why wouldn’t that be a warranty job?

The sensor has moved back slightly, which causes an issue.. The suggested it was stone damage.

I'd argue the fuck against that. If it can be damaged to the point of needing a £500 repair by something like a stone hitting it, which is something that is obviously going to be a risk when driving, that's a poor design.

Unless you're talking about a rear parking sensor of course, in which case I'd be asking why the hell you've been doing J-turns at that speed

I did argue, but Skoda were having none of it... it was the front parking sensor which is pushed back a bit, just enough to cause errors. I can't get my hand in to push it back, annoyingly.

Yeah to be fair if it's damage from something external that wouldn't normally be a warranty thing. I'd just go to a local garage and get an estimate. Might be ten minutes and a few quid. Dealers usually just immediately replace parts.

Fair enough. That could have been a car park bump.

Does anyone have a small child with skinny arms who could be forced into helping?

Small arms have been banned since Dunblame.

Maybe some gaffer tape, glue gun, to grab it and pull it out yourself from the front? Half a tennis ball trick?

New car delivered.

Can’t see it, Kov. Could you draw a circle around the bit of the photo we’re supposed to be looking at?

Ha ha. I think you can see it from space.

You should take it back, mate, some fucker's scrawled on your number plate.

Nice, Kov!

What is the name of this colour option out if interest? I'm imagining Violent Kiwi.

Electric Zit

Hyper green.

It's awesome. My wife would never allow it.

Just say it is cool.

Every one I have spoken to loves the colour

I had a look at a Renault 5 EV yesterday. It’s gorgeous and very reasonably priced.

Yeah, liked the look of those ever since they were first shown. And the production car is pretty close to the concept. Also have a real soft spot for Renault 5s, they were my first and second cars.

They look really nice. Done a good job keeping the originals appearance. I’d imagine they’re a fair bit bigger though,no?

My first wife had a 1.0L Renault 5. It was shit. Couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding. There's a long-ish 12% incline near to me (Harley Bank, for local readers!) and even in first gear it would struggle to get up it -- and it was properly hair-raising if we had to slow down at any point on the way up and thus lose momentum.

New one looks good though.

Renault 5 Turbos were the whip of choice for local drug dealers.

Haha, Sweeney wrote his off outside my mum and dads house.

My first car was a 1 litre fiat panda and it would still have made it up there but it could have been harder with a car full.

Telegraph hill near Exeter is 13.4% at its steepest and it did that just fine but you get a good run up.